permaculture

[Toby Hemenway <toby@patternliteracy.com>]

I'm about 95% as skeptical as John here. The only new thing about this is
that solar energy via photosynthesis may provide the energy needed to
constantly maintain the electrolyte differential. In other words, it's still
just a battery but it looks like it's also attached to a solar battery
charger. That makes it different from, and potentially (excuse the pun
there) more useful than a lemon battery.

Toby
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On 1/11/06 10:49 PM, "John Schinnerer" <john@eco-living.net> wrote:

> Aloha,
> 
> FWIW...before anyone invests their retirement savings in this...
> 
>> Lagadonis said tests have generated 0.8 volts to 1.2 volts by driving
>> an aluminum roofing nail half an inch into a tree attached to a
>> copper water pipe driven 7 inches into the ground.
> 
> All those kids' science books usually use a lemon instead of a tree...so
> lemon trees ought to work really great...just wire the lemons right
> there on the tree instead of picking them first...not much use for cold
> climates though, where the need for the energy is greater...
> 
> More seriously though...of course they're getting a voltage.  Put any
> two dissimilar metals in some sort of electrolyte and you'll get a voltage.
> 
> Here it's aluminium and copper, and the electrolyte is the moisture in
> tree and ground, which is not pure water, so it'll conduct to some degree.
> 
>> But the
>> electricity is useless because it¹s unstable and fluctuates.
> 
> Well doh! The electrolyte quality and quantity is pretty darn variable
> in this setup.  Of course it fluctuates.
> 
> Since all they're really doing is making a battery out of dissimilar
> metals placed in an electrolyte, I suspect any refinements to their
> system will end up reinventing a battery.
> Or at least lead them to notice (could they really not realize this
> already?!!?) that they're just making a battery...
> 
>> ³It¹s a renewable source and it¹s an unlimited source,² he said.
> 
> It's neither.  It's a battery like the lemon-penny-roofing nail
> childhood science experiment (unless there's some secret something
> somewhere besides the metals and the tree and soil moisture that they're
> not telling about here).